October 31, 2012

One Aim of Anti-Terror Narrative Is To Destroy Press Freedom

"Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent. " - Miguel de Unamuno.

Infowars reported yesterday that an episode in Jesse Ventura's TruTv show 'Conspiracy Theory' that examined the waste and corruption of the TSA has been pulled from the upcoming season.

It is a miracle that the show is allowed on the air. It is proof that America is not a full-blown totalitarian police state. But it doesn't have to be because the obedience of the majority of the American people has been guaranteed with other strategies and tactics.

Institutions like the TSA have contributed to the creation of a slave-like citizenry. Popular culture has made obedience a hip thing and turned rebellion into a mental disorder. Just having a different opinion is considered nutty and "conspiratorial."

But America could become a completely closed society. If current trends continue then little windows into the real world like Ventura's show will be closed shut. Censorship in America has always been a gradual process. It begins with a line in a movie script, then an episode in a television series, and then a book or a website.

The victim of totalitarian propaganda does not know that he is being mentally suffocated and deprived of the facts. He cannot imagine how much resources has been used by the government to keep him in the dark about nearly everything. The tyranny of psy-ops is invisible. And the enemies of intellectual freedom are everywhere.

Most journalists have abandoned their profession. Edward R. Murrow would be lost in America today. He would be treated as an alien, called a conspiracy theorist, and laughed out of the room.

What journalists faced in the 1950s was pretty mild compared to now. Imagine if the communist-hunters of the Cold War era had a secret Kill List and were emboldened by an event like 9/11 that traumatized the nation's psyche.

The anti-terror narrative is more dangerous to liberty because anyone can be a terrorist but not everybody can be a communist. The hijackers of the U.S. government have played loose with the definition of terrorism in order to silence their internal and external critics. Even journalists are now terrorists.

The abuse of language to instill fear in society is a trick that works in every country. But it has succeeded in America only to a limited extent. The alternative media has put into question the mainstream understanding of the roots of terrorism and the 9/11 events in particular.

As Alex Jones said yesterday on the radio, it is an achievement that the alternative media has become so big. But we should never get complacent. Each of us must make use of whatever is left of press freedom in the West.